A Regenerative Approach to Inclusive Growth.
Cultivating Shared Resilience
Anchorship Lab is a practical framework to keep ownership of property and enterprises in the community. It helps teams and local coalitions move from vision to action to investment. It fosters belonging, resilience, and pathways to unlock Double Equity: equity of voice (decision-making rights), and equity of ownership (financial and asset capital).
Preventing Displacement
Displacement doesn’t just uproot residents — it erodes culture, connection, and generational wealth. Anchorship helps communities co-create pathways where people don’t get pushed out, they get a seat at the table and a name on the cap table.
Attracting Regenerative Capital
Through the ALIGN Process (below) communities build trust, surface priorities, and shape an investable prospectus. This shared clarity unlocks and attracts regenerative capital — investment that aligns with community values, placemaking, and resilience.
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The Problem:
We all have areas in town that are ripe for renewal. But too often, capital arrives before community voice align, and then leaves without lasting impact. When capital, process, and power are misaligned, even well-intentioned “revitalization” can become displacement. But when communities own the process and share the stake, everyone benefits.
Three Common Barriers:
Capital Misalignment
Top-down funding rarely matches local priorities, trust, or timelines. Federal dollars are fickle. Philanthropy stays siloed.
Token Engagement
Communities are asked to react, not co-create. Projects arrive "shovel-ready" instead of through collaborative development.
Stalled Partnerships
Without a shared playbook, efforts fizzle. "Readiness" is too often defined by zoning or RFIs, not lived experience and community pillars.
Anchorship Lab is different.
Anchorship Lab offers a locally adaptable, pre-investment framework. It helps communities:
  • Build clarity and legitimacy from the ground up.
  • Signal real investment readiness to aligned partners.
  • Shift from extractive cycles to Double Equity outcomes.
  • Cultivate trust across sectors before capital enters.

Can workers become business owners? Can business owners buy their block?
Yes. When communities lead with shared vision and aligned values, the same process that prevents displacement can build capacity that builds regenerative equity value (REV) — unlocking opportunity, ownership, and true anchorship.
Inspired by the spirit of the Dynamism Fund (which did not become U.S. law), Anchorship Lab offers a community-led process to demonstrate readiness for regenerative investment, ensuring capital is rooted in belonging, stewardship, and community ownership — not extraction.
The ALIGN Process
Anchorship is not a place, project, or plan. It's the civic, cultural, and structural alignment that allows regenerative investment to flow without displacement or extraction. The following themes can guide a "vision day", or as sessions that go deep into planning.
1
Articulate Shared Vision
Communities co-create a forward-looking vision using Theory of Change (ToC) to link aspirations → outcomes → actions. The result is a Vision Card that guides partnerships, policy, and investment.
2
Liberate Voices & Governance
Convene a Stakeholder Circle reflecting the full community spectrum. Use Liberatory Design to uncover aspirations and establish regenerative governance practices, creating a Stakeholder Map.
3
Identify Assets & Leverage Strengths
Use Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) to reveal underutilized strengths and opportunities, creating an Asset Map that channels capital where it matters most.
4
Generate the Dynamism Profile
Transform insights into a Dynamism Profile: the community's narrative pitch deck showing readiness, needs, capacity, and catalytic invitation, replacing deficit-based "needs assessments."
5
Navigate Pathways to Anchorship
Co-design Community Playbooks and Personal Pathways that capture place-based strategies and offer routes to property & enterprise ownership, stewardship, and Double Equity (governance rights + ownership/financial capital).
Each step in ALIGN can be guided with a session rhythm that helps participants move naturally from ideas to action, whether using paper handouts or digital tools, like the Anchorship Lab web app.
Example ALIGN Session
Start
Open with an icebreaker prompt or grounding question. Set tone, invite openness, and cue people into collaborative space.
Share
Invite broad input. Everyone contributes — stories, ideas, images, maps, sticky notes. Emphasize inclusion and equal voice.
Sort
Help the group cluster, rank, or filter what was shared using dot-voting, affinity mapping, or polls. Collective vision sharpens focus.
Save
Capture the group's insights in a lasting form: notes, photos, shared docs. This becomes raw material for the Tidemark (visible output).
Step Up
Invite participants to nominate or volunteer action leaders to hold responsibility for refining or carrying forward the Tidemark.
Send
The group confirms completion together through a signal of agreement, marking the anchorship mooring as secured.

Familiar Framework? This rhythm aligns with established facilitation frameworks like ORID, Liberating Structures, Double Diamond, Kolb's Experiential Learning Cycle, and World Café. Facilitators can overlay their preferred approach, and the ALIGN rhythm will still guide participants from exploration to action to readiness for regenerative capital.
Ready for Renewal?
The ALIGN process builds genuine community power and prepares you for regenerative investment. Even if you are not sure you are ready, contact us to discuss how Anchorship Lab can transform your community's investment readiness and ensure lasting impact.